Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
currently declined. Thus today Cisco's most important routers are those used to deliver IP
packets.
Cisco went public on the NASDAQ exchange in February of 1990 with a market cap-
italization of $224 million. In the midst of a shake-up seven months later, Lerner was fired
and her husband resigned in protest. The couple walked away in disgust, but with $170
million, more than two thirds of which they eventually gave to charity.
Cisco continued to grow, largely through acquisitions. In the year 1995 - 1996 alone
the company completed 11 acquisitions. Major firms that have over the years become part
of the Cisco fold include Stratacom, Cerent Corporation and Linksys. A number of these
acquired companies have grown into $1 billion+ product lines for Cisco, including major
offerings in LAN switching, Enterprise Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), and home net-
working. At the height of the dot-com boom in March of 2000, Cisco briefly was the most
highly-capitalized company on the planet, with a market capitalization of more than $500
billion.
There have been a few bumps in the road. In April of 2001, a class action lawsuit
charged the firm with making misleading statements in forward-looking financial analyses
that "were relied on by purchasers of Cisco stock." Executives were also charged with in-
sider trading. Cisco denied all allegations, but in August of 2006 paid $91.75 million to
bring the suit to an end. On another occasion, in December of 2008, the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) filed suit concerning Cisco's failure to comply with the GNU General
Public License (GPL) and LGPL (Lesser General Public License) and make the applicable
source code generally available. Cisco settled this lawsuit in the spring of 2009 by comply-
ing with FSF licensing terms and making a monetary contribution to the FSF.
